Robotic Rumble Read online

  At that very moment, a Grabbem ship was lurking in the fog on the far side of Ghost Island. Axel didn’t know it yet, but Agent Omega was right. Grabbem were here already.

  The ship was long and grey, but it wasn’t a battleship. It was broad and flat-topped, but it wasn’t an aircraft carrier. It was a transporter, and its one job was to transport a colossal robot called Tektonicus Max.

  The robot covered the entire length of the ship, bow to stern. He lay on his back like a gigantic zombie in a tomb, about to arise. A single oval eye looked out from his head. Grabbem technicians fussed over him, checking all his parts were in working order. This was not as easy as it sounds, because Tektonicus Max – like some toys on Christmas morning – had no batteries at the moment, and none of the technicians were quite sure he would work properly.

  Inside the huge eye – which was in fact a detachable command pod that could pop out and fly around by itself – sat the head of Grabbem Corporation, Mr Grabbem. He ran his hands over the controls. All the little lights were dark. The buttons clicked, but didn’t do anything. Yet.

  Mr Grabbem wasn’t bothered. He had spent billions building Tektonicus Max, and many of the Grabbem scientists had whispered to one another that he’d gone bonkers. What was the point of a giant robot that had no power source and was so big that no known power source would be enough?

  But Mr Grabbem knew what he was doing. There was a special slot in Tektonicus Max for the Phoenix Reactor to fit into. And when it did …

  ‘We’ll finish that brat and his stolen robot once and for all,’ he grinned. ‘Stomp him. Squish!’

  Just then, a roar went up through the abandoned buildings.

  Mr Grabbem turned pale.

  ‘What was that?’ he whispered.

  The bottom of the Meatball hissed open. Axel looked down at Ghost Island, grey and still as an abandoned battleship, surrounded by banks of fog. From up here, it looked pretty empty. Maybe this mission would be easier than they had thought.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  The Meatball’s tentacles released BEAST. They fell down towards the waiting buildings, hurtling through the air, picking up speed as fast as a dropped brick. Axel fired BEAST’s foot-thrusters to slow them down before they could smash into the ground like a meteorite.

  He looked around for a good place to land and spotted an open area that must have been a town square. He landed BEAST on a patch of bare, dry grass in the middle of the buildings and looked around.

  The whole place was as still as a graveyard.

  They were standing in what must once have been a park, but the trees were all long dead. There wasn’t even any wind to stir the ragged flag that hung limp as a damp towel from a nearby pole. Time had stood still.

  ‘Do you see any sign of Grabbem, BEAST?’

  ‘NOT YET.’

  ‘Any radioactive dragon-monsters?’

  ‘THERE IS RADIATION HERE,’ warned BEAST. ‘I AM DETECTING IT NOW. STAY INSIDE YOUR COCKPIT, AXEL. DO NOT LEAVE. DO NOT EVEN OPEN THE DOOR.’

  BEAST’s communicator crackled. Agent Omega’s voice came through, but it was distorted and kept breaking up. ‘Axel? – hiss, pop – confirm safe landing. There ought to be – screech, tick-tick-tick – current location. Can you confirm?’

  ‘Say again?’ Axel said. ‘Didn’t catch that.’

  This time, all that came through the communicator was a squealing, rushing hiss, like an old-fashioned radio being tuned. White noise, Axel thought.

  ‘RADIATION IS INTERFERING WITH THE SIGNAL,’ warned BEAST.

  ‘Oh, great! Can you still detect the reactor?’

  ‘YES, BUT NOT VERY CLEARLY. IT WILL HELP IF WE CAN SCAN FROM SEVERAL DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. AND AXEL, I THINK WE SHOULD HURRY. SOMETHING IS WRONG.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m with you. Let’s find that reactor and get out of here.’

  BEAST marked three points he wanted to scan from, on top of three different buildings. Axel shifted BEAST into ARACHNON form. He felt a little peculiar to see BEAST’s arms and legs split neatly in two, then extend out into spidery limbs with pincers on the end.

  ARACHNON scuttled across the square and up the side of the nearest office block. Axel didn’t want to look into the windows as they climbed, but he couldn’t stop himself. In one room he saw a toppled-over chair beside a desk, as if the office worker had run away in terror. The desk had a cup of ancient coffee on it, thick with mould.

  It might not have been ghosts, he thought, but SOMETHING scared these people away. What could it have been?

  Then, from somewhere nearby, a groaning roar ripped through the air.

  It was a roar filled with rage and hunger. It sounded like no animal of this Earth. An unknown dinosaur might bellow like that, perhaps – a forgotten king of the dinosaurs, huger than anything before or since, thankfully lost to history. It was a roar to make anything warm-blooded run and hide.

  BEAST clamped himself to the wall and huddled there. Axel froze on the spot, chilled to the bone. ‘What was that?’

  ‘BEAST DOES NOT KNOW!’

  ‘Machinery? Something from an old industrial plant? A rusty crane turning in the wind? Tell me that’s what it was!’

  ‘THERE IS NO WIND,’ said BEAST, sounding small and terrified.

  Axel glanced down into the streets. He couldn’t see anything, but some deep instinct told him the streets weren’t as empty as they looked.

  He said, ‘Chances are it’s a Grabbem machine of some kind. Get your scan done, quick. We need to move.’

  Once BEAST’s first scan was done, Axel used the ARACHNON web-projector to launch a web-line across the street to the building opposite. The cable latched on, and BEAST clambered out and across.

  ‘This way we can stay up on the rooftops, out of the streets,’ explained Axel.

  ‘THAT IS FINE BY ME!’ said BEAST.

  Once they reached the building, ARACHNON’s spidery legs scrambled easily over the walls and ledges to get to their target. Soon they were ready for their second scan.

  Axel felt sweaty and nervous, and the controls were slippery in his hands. What if the terrible noise happened again?

  Next second, it did happen again, and closer. The roar was so loud the building vibrated. The glass in the windowpanes shook and one of the panes shattered.

  He looked around to see where the roar had come from. Still there was nothing.

  Then he saw something that made him feel like he’d missed a step going downstairs and had fallen helpless and headlong into a nightmare. An abandoned car down in the streets – a car he could have sworn was undamaged seconds before – was crushed flat.

  Just as if some colossal, invisible monster had stomped down on it, he thought.

  ‘How’s that scan coming, BEAST?’

  ‘ALL DONE.’

  ‘One more to go. Then we grab that reactor and we get the heck out of here.’

  The last scanning point was halfway up a metal radio mast. ARACHNON had no trouble climbing up it. He looked like a huge house-spider scrambling up flyscreen on a window.

  As the antennae on ARACHNON’s bulbous head began to twitch and swivel, scanning for the Phoenix Reactor, Axel watched the street below.

  Whatever’s out there, it knows we’re scanning. It wants to scare us off. This HAS to be a Grabbem trick. Well, BEAST and I don’t scare easy!

  ‘AXEL, I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I AM VERY SCARED,’ said BEAST.

  ‘Remember what Agent Omega said, BEAST. There’s no monster here. It’s just a story that someone made up to scare people. But Grabbem are real –’

  A tremendously powerful something smashed into the radio mast below them. BEAST let out an electronic squeal as the mast buckled and began to collapse.

  Axel’s reflexes went into overdrive. He grabbed the aiming control, locked the web-projector on to the nearest surface he could find – a huge billboard – and fired.

  ARACHNON’s web-line shot out towards the billboard, which showed a smiling woman holding a d
ish full of noodles. The web-line thunked into her left nostril and stuck fast.

  Axel punched the control to reel them in.

  ARACHNON whizzed up the web-line, away from the toppling radio mast, and ended up dangling from the smiling woman’s nose like a massive spider-shaped booger.

  The mast crashed down into the street. Clouds of dust swirled in the air where the mast’s base had been torn up from the ground. The dust clung to the thing that they hadn’t been able to see before.

  The thing that had crushed the car.

  The thing that had roared.

  Axel felt the blood drain from his face.

  ‘THE GHOST ISLAND MONSTER!’ said BEAST. ‘IT’S REAL!’

  Axel could barely see the ‘monster’. The dust clung to its invisible body in patches, making it look ghostly and half-real. He saw lumbering legs, a claw, a swaying dinosaur-like head. It was looking back and forth along the empty streets, searching for something. For them, no doubt.

  Axel punched the communicator button. ‘Agent Omega? We’re going to need that evac. We have a very big problem down here!’

  All that came through the speakers was a nasty hissing buzz, like someone making a wasp smoothie in a kitchen blender.

  ‘He can’t hear us,’ Axel said. ‘We’re on our own.’

  ‘CAN WE JUST STAY HANGING HERE?’ BEAST said. ‘BEAST DOES NOT MIND. BEAST IS ACTUALLY QUITE COMFORTABLE.’

  ‘I wish we could,’ said Axel. ‘But we need to beat Grabbem to the Phoenix Reactor. This is probably some kind of trick of theirs to scare us off.’

  A rhythmic boom, boom, boom told them the thing was on the move again. It left deep footprints. Right before his eyes, Axel saw a car crushed to a flat mat of metal as the monster stomped on it.

  ‘I HAVE A LOCK ON THE REACTOR,’ said BEAST.

  Axel glanced at BEAST’s map and saw that the blinking signal was just where he feared it would be – on the other side of the monster. They’d have to get past it to reach their goal.

  The monster stopped in its tracks. Its half-visible head turned to face BEAST. It hesitated. Then it reached up a claw and tugged something in its shoulder. It must have been a switch, because the next moment its whole body shimmered and it steadily became clearly visible, like a demon taking physical form.

  It’s done playing games, Axel thought. No more hiding. It wants to fight.

  Crimson-and-black armour plating came slowly into view. The monster’s metal breastplate was battered, as if from countless battles.

  ‘IT IS NOT A MONSTER! IT IS A ROBOT!’ gasped BEAST. ‘LIKE ME!’

  BEAST was right. The ‘monster’ was made of mechanical parts. The tail was a segmented, intricate creation, the eyes were glowing lenses, and the claws were hydraulic pincers.

  ‘It’s a Grabbem attack bot,’ Axel said. ‘I knew it!’

  It’d be just like Grabbem to build a super-mean robot after they accidentally built a kind and gentle one like BEAST, Axel thought.

  With a sound of grinding gears, the attack bot’s mouth opened. A red lance of fiery light blazed from between its jaws.

  BEAST squealed in panic and Axel grabbed his controls, thinking, We’re dead. I was too slow. I should have seen that coming.

  But the attack bot’s blast didn’t hit BEAST head on. It tore through the ARACHNON web-line, blackening and splitting it like burnt spaghetti and turning the noodle woman’s face into a smouldering crater.

  The cable snapped and ARACHNON fell.

  Axel tried to aim and fire another web-line, but he was seconds too slow. ARACHNON dropped with a mighty crash and lay twitching on its back, looking a lot like a real spider that had been swatted down from the ceiling. Axel was slammed about inside BEAST’s cockpit. ‘Ow!’ he yelled.

  The attack bot reared back its head and a new sound came from its gaping jaws. It was an ugly, stop-start kind of a sound, but that wasn’t what made it horrible.

  It was a laugh.

  Axel narrowed his eyes. Memories came back to him. He’d been laughed at before, back in school, when the bullies had ganged up on him in packs. In those days, nobody had been on his side. He hadn’t had BEAST then. But now he did, and things were different.

  ‘Shift form,’ he snarled. ‘Go into GALAHAD.’

  ‘SHIFTING!’ said BEAST, who – Axel was glad to hear – also sounded more angry than hurt.

  In a single flip, ARACHNON rolled over and crouched down among the rubble. Its eight limbs folded back into four.

  BEAST’s legs thickened and grew tall. From his left arm, a metal shield inflated like a life raft, locking into place with a steely snap. Its surface was mirror-bright. From his right hand a long blade extended. Axel had expected it to look like steel, too, but it was some sort of transparent material like diamond. A crystal sword that can cut through a tank, he thought dizzily.

  BEAST’s head was the last to change. The bug-like ARACHNON head vanished in a blur of shifting parts. In its place was an armoured bump with eyes in it, like an iron potato.

  Axel nodded with grim satisfaction. He heaved GALAHAD out of the crater where they had fallen and stomped down the street to face the ghostly robot.

  It was still there, though difficult to see. Only a hundred metres away from them, it tilted its head and watched with interest as they strode towards it. For the first time, Axel saw its tail moving behind it, thrashing back and forth.

  ‘Hey, you! Want to try that blaster of yours again?’ Axel yelled.

  The robot let out a mean-sounding hiss. Its jaws flew open.

  Axel quickly brought up the shield and then fell to one knee so it would cover GALAHAD’s entire body.

  The robot’s red blast lashed into GALAHAD’s shield, which thrummed like a guitar string as it took the impact. To the robot’s clear surprise, the shield didn’t just look like a mirror, it worked like one too. The blast rebounded off at an angle, punching right through a ground-floor shop and out the other side, pulverising an abandoned petrol station in the next street.

  Axel and the attack bot both looked at the massive hole in the building, and then looked at each other.

  The two robots faced one another in the abandoned street.

  ‘BAKA,’ the attack bot said, in a deep voice that seemed to purr with hate.

  ‘TRANSLATING,’ said BEAST. ‘THE WORD BAKA MEANS – ’

  ‘I know what it means,’ interrupted Axel. He didn’t speak Japanese, but he had been on the internet often enough to learn a few things.

  Baka was a very common insult in Japan. It meant ‘idiot’.

  ‘We’ll see who’s the baka here, you Grabbem scrap pile,’ he whispered.

  He drew back GALAHAD’s sword arm, ready to strike, crouching low, and carefully kept the shield up in case the attack bot tried that blast beam again. Then he jerked GALAHAD’s head backwards twice, sending a message that he was sure the attack bot would understand. It was the universal gesture for come at me, bro.

  The attack bot bellowed in fury. It lowered its head and charged.

  Axel stood his ground as the attack bot thundered towards him.

  One good, hard sword blow should stop it in its tracks. He just had to keep his nerve until it got close enough.

  He knew exactly where he’d strike. Just above the attack bot’s left hip was a mass of exposed cables. BEAST’s enhanced vision labelled them as unarmoured. The crystal blade should slice through them like soft macaroni.

  The robot grinned. It bore down on him, claws outstretched. It almost seemed to be daring Axel to attack it, as if this were a game of chicken.

  Axel held his breath. Closer … closer … almost there. He could feel the vibrations of the thing’s pounding feet.

  He swung – and the attack bot leapt, as if it had known the blow was coming. It soared up into the air – GALAHAD’s sword blade swished harmlessly beneath – and then down it came, plunging towards the spot where Axel stood.

  The world seemed to go into slow motion. In half a second, tha
t thing was going to hit him with the force of a ten-tonne truck falling off a cliff. The shield wouldn’t help. He needed to move!

  He dived forwards, away from the plummeting nightmare.

  THOOOM. The attack bot landed behind them.

  Axel rolled head over heels and stood up, unsteadily.

  The attack bot spun around to face them.

  Axel spun around too. He turned the movement into a sword slash and aimed the blade at the enemy robot’s neck.

  Startled, the attack bot tried to ward off the sword blow with its claws.

  Snikt! The blade sheared clean through one of the razor-sharp talons. The talon fell to the ground with a clatter.

  Axel felt suddenly guilty, as if he’d kicked a football through a window and now he’d have to pay for it.

  While the maimed attack bot stared at its stump of a talon and roared, Axel got into a combat stance.

  The attack bot charged at him. This time, it had none of the gloating patience it had shown before. Now, it was mad.

  It lunged at GALAHAD with a flurry of claw rakes that bounced harmlessly off the shield. The jaws snapped, biting at GALAHAD’s face.

  Axel brought the shield up for protection, and the attack bot’s jaws closed on its edge. It hung there, its jaws locked, like a dog that won’t let go of a Frisbee, until Axel began to wonder if it was trying to chew the shield to pieces.

  ‘Get off!’ he yelled. He tried to hit it with the sword again, but the attack bot caught GALAHAD’s thick wrist with its clawed hand and held it fast. Now both of BEAST’s arms were pinned, one by the jaws and one by the claws.

  Growling, the attack bot forced them backwards until they were pressed up against a brick wall.

  ‘WARNING. MY INTERNAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING CRUSHED,’ said BEAST.

  ‘Can you shift?’

  ‘IMPOSSIBLE. I CANNOT RETRACT MY ARMS!’

  A cold feeling of horror ran through Axel then. Did this vicious robot know about BEAST’s shifting ability? Was it doing this on purpose?